Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Toward Achieving Architecture Alignment of Business and IT: A Portfolio Decision Analysis Approach

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Systems Engineering in Context

  • 773 Accesses

Abstract

The alignment of business and IT continues to concern researchers and practitioners. A great deal of research has been conducted over the last three decades. The resulting literature has focused on multiple alignment types and alignment dimensions. This paper, however, will consider architecture alignment from the structural dimension. After discussing the status quo of architecture alignment, we propose a complementary method to improve the alignment criteria of performance. This method combines the portfolio decision analysis (PDA) with enterprise architecture (EA). We will focus on four specific steps of the method. Additionally, we will consider how the method meets all of the five alignment criteria proposed in this paper.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Avison, D., Jones, J., Powell, P., & Wilson, D. (2004). Using and validating the strategic alignment model. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 13, 223–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Kashanchi, R., & Toland, J. (2006). Can ITIL contribute to IT/business alignment? An initial investigation. Wirtschaftsinformatik, 48(5), 340–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Beimborn, D., Franke, J., Wagner, H., & Weitzel, T. (2007). The influence of alignment on the post-implementation success of a core banking information system: An embedded case study. In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’07), Waikoloa, Hawaii.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Wagner, H., Beimborn, D., Franke, J., &Weitzel, T. (2006). IT business alignment and IT usage in operational processes: A retail banking case. In Proceedings of the 39th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’06), Koloa, Kauai.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Gerow, J. E., Grover, V., Thatcher, J. B., & Roth, P. L. (2014). Looking toward the future of IT-business strategic alignment through the past: A meta-analysis. MIS Quarterly, 38(4), 1059–1085.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Luftman, J., Lyytinen, K., & ben Zvi, T. (2017). Enhancing the measurement of information technology (IT) business alignment and its influence on company performance. Journal of Information Technology, 32(1), 26–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Baker, J., Jones, D. R., Cao, Q., & Song, J. (2011). Conceptualizing the dynamic strategic alignment competency. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 12(4), 299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Henderson, J. C., & Venkatraman, H. (1993). Strategic alignment: Leveraging information technology for transforming organizations. IBM Systems Journal, 32(1), 472–484.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Luftman, J., & Kempaiah, R. (2007). An update on business-IT alignment: “A line” has been drawn. MIS Quarterly Executive, 6(3), 165.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Aier, S., & Winter, R. (2009). Virtual decoupling for IT/business alignment–conceptual foundations, architecture design and implementation example. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 1(2), 150–163.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Chen, H. M. (2008, January 7). Towards service engineering: Service orientation and business-IT alignment. In Proceedings of the 41st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (p. 114). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Fritscher, B., & Pigneur, Y. (2011, June 20). Business IT alignment from business model to enterprise architecture. In International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (pp. 4–15). Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Hinkelmann, K., & Pasquini, A. (2014, August 2). Supporting business and IT alignment by modeling business and IT strategy and its relations to enterprise architecture. In Enterprise Systems Conference (ES) (pp. 149–154). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Schlosser, F., Wagner, H. T., & Coltman, T. (2012, January 4). Reconsidering the dimensions of business-IT alignment. In 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Science (HICSS) (pp. 5053–5061). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Wagner, H. T., & Weitzel, T. (2012). How to achieve operational business-IT alignment: Insights from a global aerospace firm. MIS Quarterly Executive, 11(1), 25.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Chan, Y. E., & Reich, B. H. (2007). IT alignment: What have we learned? Journal of Information Technology, 22(4), 297–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Franke, U., Flores, W. R., & Johnson, P. (2009, March 22). Enterprise architecture dependency analysis using fault trees and Bayesian networks. In Proceedings of the 2009 Spring Simulation Multiconference (p. 55). Society for Computer Simulation International.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hugoson, M. Å., & Pessi, K. (2011, June 15). Operational and structural business IT alignment. In International Conference on Business Information Systems (pp. 196–207). Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Haren, V. (2011, December 7). TOGAF Version 9.1. Van Haren Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  20. DoD AS. (2009). DoD architecture framework version 2.0 (DoDAF V2.0). Washington, DC: Department of Defense.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Biggs, B. (2005). Ministry of defence architectural framework (MODAF).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Bodhuin, T., Esposito, R., Pacelli, C., & Tortorella, M. (2004, June). Impact analysis for supporting the co-evolution of business processes and supporting software systems. In CAiSE Workshops (Vol. 2, pp. 146–150).

    Google Scholar 

  23. Shishkov, B., Van Sinderen, M., & Quartel, D. (2006, October). SOA-driven business-software alignment. In 2006 IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE’06). (pp. 86–94). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Strnadl, C. F. (2006). Aligning business and it: The process-driven architecture model. Information Systems Management, 23(4), 67–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Elvesater, B., Panfilenko, D., Jacobi, S., & Hahn, C. (2010, October 3). Aligning business and IT models in service-oriented architectures using BPMN and SoaML. In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Model-Driven Interoperability (pp. 61–68). ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  26. Kang, D., Lee, J., & Kim, K. (2010). Alignment of business enterprise architectures using fact-based ontologies. Expert Systems with Applications, 37(4), 3274–3283.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Delgado, A., Ruiz, F., de Guzmán, I. G., & Piattini, M. (2012, March 26). Model transformations for business-IT alignment: From collaborative business process to SoaML service model. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (pp. 1720–1722). ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Iacob, M. E., Quartel, D., & Jonkers, H. (2012, September 10). Capturing business strategy and value in enterprise architecture to support portfolio valuation. In 2012 IEEE 16th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC) (pp. 11–20). IEEE.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Antunes, G., Caetano, A., Bakhshandeh, M., Mayer, R., & Borbinha, J. (2013, June 19). Using ontologies for enterprise architecture model alignment. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Business and IT Alignment (BITA 2013), Poznan, Poland.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Antunes, G., Caetano, A., Bakhshandeh, M., Mayer, R., & Borbinha, J. (2013, June 19). Using ontologies to integrate multiple enterprise architecture domains. In International Conference on Business Information Systems (pp. 61–72). Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Hinkelmann, K., Gerber, A., Karagiannis, D., Thoenssen, B., Van der Merwe, A., & Woitsch, R. (2016). A new paradigm for the continuous alignment of business and IT: Combining enterprise architecture modelling and enterprise ontology. Computers in Industry, 79, 77–86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Tanriverdi, H., & Lim, S. Y. (2017). How to survive and thrive in complex, hypercompetitive, and disruptive ecosystems? The roles of IS-enabled capabilities. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Information Systems, Seoul, South Korea (pp. 1–21).

    Google Scholar 

  33. Tanriverdi, H., Rai, A., & Venkatraman, N. (2010). Research commentary—reframing the dominant quests of information systems strategy research for complex adaptive business systems. Information Systems Research, 21(4), 822–834.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Yoo, Y., Boland Jr., R. J., Lyytinen, K., & Majchrzak, A. (2012). Organizing for innovation in the digitized world. Organization Science, 23(5), 1398–1408.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Allen, P. M., & Varga, L. (2006). A co-evolutionary complex systems perspective on information systems. Journal of Information Technology, 21(4), 229–238.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Liesiö, J., Mild, P., & Salo, A. (2007). Preference programming for robust portfolio modeling and project selection. European Journal of Operational Research, 181(3), 1488–1505.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Salo, A., Keisler, J., & Morton, A. (2011). An invitation to portfolio decision analysis (pp. 3–27). New York: Springer.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  38. Salo, A., Keisler, J., & Morton, A. (Eds.). (2011). Portfolio decision analysis: Improved methods for resource allocation. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  39. Liesiö, J., & Salo, A. (2012). Scenario-based portfolio selection of investment projects with incomplete probability and utility information. European Journal of Operational Research, 217(1), 162–172.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  40. Salo, A., & Liesiö, J. (2006). A case study in participatory priority setting for a Scandinavian research program. International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making, 5(1), 65–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Lindstedt, M., Liesio, J., & Salo, A. (2008). Participatory development of a strategic product portfolio in a telecommunication company. International Journal of Technology Management, 42(3), 250–266.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Kangaspunta, J., Liesiö, J., Mild, P., & Salo, A. (2012). Cost-efficiency analysis of weapon system portfolios. European Journal of Operational Research, 223, 264–275.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Science and Technology on Information Systems Engineering Laboratory, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, People’s Republic of China

    Mengmeng Zhang & Honghui Chen

  2. Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Kalle Lyytinen

Authors
  1. Mengmeng Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Honghui Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Kalle Lyytinen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mengmeng Zhang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Stephen Adams

  2. Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Peter A. Beling

  3. Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    James H. Lambert

  4. Department of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    William T. Scherer

  5. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Cody H. Fleming

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Zhang, M., Chen, H., Lyytinen, K. (2019). Toward Achieving Architecture Alignment of Business and IT: A Portfolio Decision Analysis Approach. In: Adams, S., Beling, P., Lambert, J., Scherer, W., Fleming, C. (eds) Systems Engineering in Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00114-8_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation